Below are three of my favorite videos of all time. They’re all quite long (averaging just under an hour each), but I re-watch all of them from time to time to stay fresh on the ideas presented in them.
Scott Stratten: The Biz Media Sessions
Scott (@unmarketing) puts out a bunch of great info on how to use social media, and this video is a great overview of some of his ideas.
David Allen: Getting Things Done
I’m a big fan of GTD, and it’s greatly changed how I’ve organized my life over the past few years. David Allen is the man behind the system, and this was a talk he gave at Google a few years ago. Lots of great tips in there.
Merlin Mann: Inbox Zero
A major aspect of GTD, at least for me, is keeping my inbox completely clean. Merlin offers some great advice in this video on how to actually make it happen.
Any other great videos out there that should be on this list?
I’m not a big fan of phone calls. I certainly use it as needed, but it’s gradually becoming less and less often. Google Voice helps quite a bit, since it rids me of the pain of voicemail, but phone calls still often (but not always) seem to be a waste of time. For example, a 20 minute phone call with a client usually could have been resolved with a 2 minute email exchange.
Two articles have come out in the last week that support that view.
In the past, when most people didn’t have mobile phones, such random calls were more common. And you might assume that our greater access to telephony would mean greater desire to make calls. Now, obviously, a big part of the reason for making calls has been replaced by (mostly text-based) alternative means, such as email, text messaging and social networks. But, I’d argue that the greater access also makes us more wary in general. For example, I was thinking about calling a friend recently, who I hadn’t spoken to in a while, but realized it would be his mobile phone, and what if he was out with his wife and kids, and I didn’t want to interrupt that.
The other article is from Pamela Paul in the New York Times, with “Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You“. Her main point is that phone calls are becoming rare enough that they can almost be alarming:
It’s at the point where when the phone does ring — and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter — my first thought is: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” My second thought is: “Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?”
For me, a big part of it is the lack of a paper trail. When I’m on a phone call, I usually need to take notes (often directly into Evernote) so I can remember exactly what was said: “edit xx file”, “invoice for $xx”, etc. Communicating via email, sms, Facebook, etc, generates an automatic record of what was said.
What do you think? I’m not quite at that point yet (I still dial and receive “random” calls quite often), but it certainly seems to be heading that direction. Where do you stand?
Over the last few years, I’ve made it quite clear that I’m a huge fan of Dropbox. It’s so simple, so useful, and (for most users) completely free. It’s amazing, and has helped make me a much more productive person. If you’re not familiar with Dropbox, check out this post from a while back that explains how it works.
Dropbox Forms from JotForm
JotForm is a pretty cool site that helps you easily build forms for your site, for things like online registration, contact forms, etc. However, they’ve recently added a new feature called “Dropbox Forms” that is quite slick — you can add a form to your site with an upload field, and anything that users upload will go directly into your Dropbox! For people that have to receive a lot of files from clients, this seems like a great solution. Check out their video below to see why you might want to use this new feature:
DropVox
The other new thing that was just released is an iPhone app called DropVox. It allows you to record audio with your phone, and the resulting file is uploaded directly into your Dropbox. It’s kind of similar to the reason that I use picplz for most of my mobile photography — having the files uploaded directly to Dropbox saves you time when you’re finished because they’re already waiting for you on your computer!
If you have an iPhone, use Dropbox, and often need to take audio notes, DropVox looks like a pretty cool solution.
Do you use Dropbox? Do you use any cool third-party tools like these to make it better?
I’ve had many people ask the same question about the Xoom and the iPad 2 – “when would I use it?”. Here’s a few answers:
In front of the tv. When I take a few minutes to chill in the evening, the tablet is much easier to use from a recliner then a phone or a laptop. On the other hand, Don Reisinger at SlashGear just posted why his iPad 2 is not very useful in the living room, so your mileage may vary.
At sports practice. While most tablets (including the iPad 2 and the Xoom) are very difficult to see when you’re outdoors, tablets work great for indoor sports. In particular, I find it quite useful when my girls are at taekwondo a couple times each week.
At lunch meetings. Great tool to work through concepts with a client, since you can show PDFs, browse web sites, etc.
At McDonald’s. My kids are in the play area as we speak!
In the car. I’ve had a few times when I’ve been in the car (not driving — in a parking lot, post-meeting or picking up my daughter from preschool) and saw a semi-important email come through on my phone. It’d be too slow and cumbersome to dig out the laptop, but very easy to pull out the tablet, look at the document/website, and hammer out a quick reply. Google video chat over 3G from a parking lot has been useful (and surprisingly high quality) as well. This also works if your spouse is driving and you need to work on something while you travel.
At church. Our minister (@IkeReighard) uses his iPad as his Bible when he preaches (he’s mentioned he loves the ability to use a huge font), and he encourages us to “take out your Bibles, iPads, Androids…” as he shares scripture. Being able to quickly bookmark passages from the Xoom is pretty slick, and our church is working on setting up YouVersion Live for the church in the near future.
I think it’d also be quite useful in classroom settings and office meetings, though a laptop might be preferred for the faster input with a keyboard.
Where can’t you use it? Outside, pretty much ever. I had dreams of using it on the back deck, but unless it’s quite shady out it’s hard to see the screen. Even in the car can be a challenge unless you can get some good shade on your side.
Realize that these are all places where I would have used my phone in the past, and the phone is still a solid solution. The tablet just makes it easier. As I’ve said before, it’s mostly about convenience. For example, I wouldn’t have written this post from McDonald’s on my phone — I would have simply waited until I got home.
If you suffer from email overload, you need to be using Gmail (or Google Apps for your business). There are simply too many awesome tools in there that you can’t find anywhere else, such as:
I’m a big believer in inbox zero, and Gmail offers many great ways to help with that. Now Google has just released a new tool called “Smart Labels” to help smooth things out even more.
If you’re a power user and already have a variety of filters and labels set up, this won’t help much. However, this could be of great benefit to everyone else.
This new feature creates three new labels for you — Bulk, Notifications and Forums — and automatically applies them to emails as they arrive in your inbox.
Bulk items are things like mailing lists, promotional emails, etc.
Notifications are emails from Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Forums are any emails from message boards that you follow.
The “bulk” items are immediately moved out of your inbox, so you need to be sure to click the label on the side from time to time to see what’s in there. The others aren’t moved automatically, though they probably should be.
It’s taken me a few years to make the transition, but I’m really starting to love Google Voice. If you’re not familiar with what Google Voice does, here’s a quick intro:
Talk online
In the time since that video was created, one other huge feature was added — you can send/receive calls with no phone at all! Just connect through your Gmail and you can talk to folks right on there using your computer microphone and speakers. If you’ve spoken with me on the phone in the past few months, it’s almost certainly been on there.
Beyond that, there are a few other reasons I love it so much. Ringing multiple phones doesn’t excite me too much, as I’m pretty much a cell-phone-only guy. However, here are a few other things I really like about Google Voice.
Text from your computer
If someone sends me a text message, it goes to my phone and to the Google Voice page in my browser. I use the Google Voice Chrome extension to notify me of any new texts or voicemails. I can reply from the computer (full keyboard always beats a phone keyboard) and they all stay synced up. If I leave the house in the middle of a text conversation, I can simply continue it from my phone without a hitch.
Voicemail Transcriptions
When someone leaves you a voicemail in Google Voice, it’s automatically transcribed and emailed to you, so you typically don’t have to waste time listening to it. The transcriptions aren’t great, but usually adequate to get the point across. Of course, it’s also fun to see what kind of mistakes their auto-transcription makes, such as the message below that actually started with “It’s your old granny…”:
The text is different shades of gray based on the confidence that Google has in the transcription of each word. Those words at the beginning are light-colored to indicate that Google isn’t very confident that they’re correct. Good call, Google.
It works best on Android
While the latest updates to the iPhone app are quite solid, the best Google Voice experience can only be had on an Android-based phone. Once you install it on there, you can tell it to pretty much take over and make every outbound call using your Google Voice number.
If you have an older cell phone, this is a problem. People will call your Google Voice number and reach you, but when you call back they’ll see your normal cell number show up on their caller id.
Also, Google Voice now supports number porting (switch your current number to Google Voice, then get a new number for your cell), but it’s a good bit of work.
The downsides
There are really only two major downsides to Google Voice.
The first is simply the fact that it’s a new phone number and you need to get people to update their info for you. I’ve done it very slowly over the past few years, as it hasn’t been much of a priority. Now I’m working a bit harder to switch those last few stragglers over to my GV number.
The second is a bit more serious, but not a huge deal — Google Voice doesn’t support MMS (picture messages). Not only that, but they don’t reject them properly either. If someone sends you a picture message, it just evaporates. You don’t get the message, and they don’t get a “failed to send” message or anything.
How about you?
Do you use Google Voice? Thinking of giving it a try?
I enjoy tech gadgets, and I tend to have quite a few of them. I have a variety of computers, a Flip video camera, a Verizon Mifi, and I change phones fairly often. With that in mind, people are often surprised I don’t have an iPad, so I thought I’d explain why.
The iPad
First off, the iPad is great! I’ve used them before, they’re amazingly slick, and some of my favorite apps like Evernote and Nozbe look awesome on there. There is no doubt that right now the iPad is the best tablet out there. If I had to buy a tablet today, I’d certainly get an iPad.
Android
The holdup is Android. I had an iPhone for a few years, but for most of that time I knew I’d switch to Android eventually. I use Gmail a lot, and I knew that Gmail on Android would be far better than the mail app on iPhone — and I was right. However, I was sticking with iPhone until a few things happened on Android:
Waiting for improvements to the Facebook app. At the time, it was awful.
Waiting for the release of the Evernote app.
Waiting for the release of the Dropbox app.
Waiting for some kind of better Twitter app.
Eventually, all of those were met and I’ve moved over to Android and I’m (probably) never coming back.
DroidPad?
It’s been no secret that there are Android tablets coming out, and we even saw a few last year (like the Samsung Galaxy Tab). However, they just weren’t very good. I could have picked up an iPad at that point, but it would have been just like when I had an iPhone — counting down the days until there was a decent Android alternative. The time has finally arrived.
The Motorola Xoom
For quite a while, I thought I’d be moving to a Notion Ink Adam. It had the potential to be an awesome tablet, but it’s had shipping delays, screen problems and a host of other minor issues that held me back.
While I was debating whether or not to pre-order an Adam, news of the Motorola Xoom came out and my decision was made. Despite a somewhat higher than anticipated price, the Xoom looks to be an amazing tablet. You may have seen their Super Bowl ad, which clearly took some shots at Apple:
As with the phone, email is the killer app for me. The Xoom has a crazy-good Gmail app, along with some impressive email widgets. All in all, it should be a great machine.
It’s expected to be released on February 24, so look for a full review sometime after that.
Do you have an iPad? Are you waiting for a Xoom? Do you think tablets are a waste of money? Share your thoughts in the comments.
One of the complaints I often hear about most of the productivity tools that I use is that people don’t have time for them. I hear things such as:
“I barely have enough time as it is; I can’t add in these tools on top of it.”
“New tools are always coming out, and I don’t have time to keep up.”
It’s a valid point, because I felt the same way a few years ago. I was working as hard as I possibly could, so how on earth would I have time for all of this “processing” and “weekly reviews” and all of the other things that make systems like GTD tick?
It takes money to make money
You’ve likely heard the phrase “it takes money to make money” before. Those that have money can make solid investments and make even more. If you don’t have money, you can’t invest, and it’s a lot more difficult.
The same is true with your time. If you can carve out a little bit of time each day to process your inboxes, get everything into lists, etc, you’ll find that it creates more available time for everything else!
The weekly review
Another core part of GTD is the weekly review; once a week, sit down and review every task in every project that you have. Make sure all of your inboxes are processed and you’ve got everything in front of you.It takes 30-90 minutes for most people, which is certainly a good chunk of time, but it really helps you get a high-level view of what’s going on and help you focus on what’s most important.
Similar to keeping an empty inbox, this is one that you have to try before you’ll believe it, as it doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense. However, once you start taking the time throughout the day to keep on top of everything, you’ll find yourself working much more efficiently and getting a lot more done.
Try it for yourself
The best way to see this in action is to simply try it for yourself. For the next week, focus on keeping your task list updated and your inbox empty and see what happens.
Have you found “it takes time to make time” to be true in your day-to-day work?
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, keeping my inbox at zero is a huge part of my organizational process, and I attribute much of my productivity to it. Having your inbox clean makes it much easier to prioritize new messages so you’re always on top of everything that you’ve got going.
A big part of inbox zero is having systems in place to keep everything. I put my tasks in Nozbe, file attachments in Dropbox, passwords and other notes into Evernote, and I count on auto-resurrection to bring emails back when a response comes in. If you don’t have a great way to deal with every email in your inbox, you’ll never be able to get them all out of there.
The two-minute rule
However, another big piece of the GTD method is the two-minute rule. If you get a new task and it’ll take less than two minutes to do, then do it immediately. If you wait on it, then you’re adding more meta data to the task that will ultimately slow you down. For example:
Adding it to your task list takes a minute to do, as does crossing it off later and prioritizing it in the meantime.
Leaving it in your inbox just gives you one more item to look past as new items come in.
It’s more difficult to have a “mind like water“, since you’ll probably be thinking about it until it’s done, at least subconsciously.
Even better, I’ve found that clients love it! People are amazed when they send me an email with a minor update to their site and it’s done (with a reply back to them) in just a few minutes. I certainly don’t always respond that quickly, especially if I’m in the middle of another project at the time, but I work hard to respond as quickly as possible.
Distractions
This idea could really lead to another conversation about distractions. The nature of my work requires that I stay on top of client requests during the day as much as possible, leading to many (paid) interruptions. However, for most people, processing email in scheduled “chunks” throughout the day (instead of responding each time a new one comes in) is often a more productive way to handle it.
Not always just two minutes
Another thought is the length of time that you fit this rule into — I often stretch it to the “5 minute rule”, or even a bit longer. If it’s something that needs to get done at some point that day, and it’s a 5-10 minute task, I’ll still usually tackle it right away. If it’s a longer task, or something that isn’t a priority for today, then I’ll add it to the to-do list and worry about it another day.
Regardless of how often you process your email, the two-minute rule is gold. Get it done and move on!
I’ve been searching for a while to find a way to automatically upload photos from my phone to Dropbox, for easy access later. The folks are Dropbox are considering adding that feature to their Android app, but they’ve been “considering” it for a while now and I don’t have much hope.
However, the popular photo-sharing app picplz just added automatic Dropbox uploading to their application and it works great! When you take a photo with their app, you can choose from the following:
Apply an effect to it (black and white, etc).
Post it to your Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, Tumblr or Foursquare.
Add it to your Dropbox.
By default, I only have it go to Dropbox, though I push fun photos to Facebook/Twitter from time to time.
What’s great about the Dropbox integration is that it uploads the full high-res untouched version, along with a copy of it with any “effect” you may have chosen.
They have apps for iPhone and Android, so most smartphone users are covered. Feel free to follow me on there to see what kind of photos I post.
I’m not a big fan of phone calls. I certainly use it as needed, but it’s gradually becoming less and less often. 
I’ve had many people ask the same question about the Xoom and the iPad 2 – “when would I use it?”. Here’s a few answers:
I enjoy tech gadgets, and I tend to have quite a few of them. I have a variety of computers, a Flip video camera, a Verizon Mifi, and I change phones fairly often. With that in mind, people are often surprised I don’t have an iPad, so I thought I’d explain why.
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, 
I’ve been searching for a while to find a way to automatically upload photos from my phone to 
+